1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to devices to be worn to prevent teeth and/or jaw damage caused by "grinding of the teeth" sometimes also known as bruxing, TMJ, clinching, gritting, or other related psychological and physiological conditions and to methods for behavior modification of such condition and to methods for acquiring data associated with such conditions.
More particularly, this invention relates to mouth pieces or teeth guards to prevent grinding of teeth and to provide bio-feed back and data acquisition capabilities by incorporating in teeth contacting regions of the guard, pressure sensing devices in electrical communication with an integrated circuit device capable of monitoring the sensing devices and transmitting a signal when a change in a normal pressure state of the pressure devices occurs to a receiving device capable of invoking a human cognizable response designed to indicate to the wearer when teeth grinding is occurring and/or to collect, store and/or analyze data associated with grinding episodes.
2. Background Information and Description of the Related Art
In prior art, the only tool that a dental doctor has now available for handling patients that grind their teeth during sleep is a simple device known as a mouth piece, split, teeth guard or mouth guard that is molded out of a hard or soft polymer conforming to a patients upper palate and teeth or lower jaw and teeth. This device offers no ability to do diagnosis or therapy towards a cure. It's only function is to protect a sufferer from damaging the enamel that will eventually deteriorate from the hard pressure and friction occurring during bouts of tooth grinding.
Thus, there is a need in the art for a device that not only protects the teeth or the enamel of the teeth and/or jaw from damage during bruxing episodes, but also provides information that can be used either to study teeth grinding or augment a patient's behavior to reduce and/or eliminate bruxing episodes.